I've been doing a bit of processing in Lightroom in the last few days and something is really troubling me. I am working on a laptop but I did buy a monitor so as to have a bigger work-space when using Lightroom. Now it's fair to say that I've not invested heavily, a higher end entry level laptop and a monitor from PC world for only around £100.

I have tried calibrating the monitor in the past and using free calibration tools I'm not sure that it's really made any significant difference. The thing that is troubling me is that the laptop and monitor are absolutely miles apart and I don't know which is at least close to correct.

Here's an example of a photo I was editing. Ok, not a great photo partly as I am some sort of cloud God when anywhere near a military aircraft, but what you can see is a huge difference in brightness between the two.

So the question really is; which should I trust or should I trust neither? Is there a solution to this?

cg_341 wrote:The biggest issue you have is that you have two different panel types so you get two different colour profiles

Thanks for the response and please excuse my ignorance, but by 'two different panel types' are you referring to the Lightroom panels or the screens themselves? And if it's the screens, do you mean that it's Lenovo and AOC or something like LED v LCD?

The calibration tool is interesting, but the fact it costs more than my monitor suggests that a better monitor would be an equally good investment.

I see. So in all honesty, it's probably not worth the effort trying to 'match' the screens I have. Would I be best working out what type screen the laptop is and then getting a monitor of the same type and going from there?

If you were me, and were doing some Lightroom work today, would you forget the monitor and work only on the laptop?

Not to dismiss monitor calibration, which can be really important for some applications, but it's important to know why you're doing it before you start. If you are just posting photos on the internet you can look at a sample of other people's work and adjust your monitor to portray colour so it looks right to you. Then when you adjust colour on your on work it'll be more or less like everyone else's (bearing in mind that you have absolutely no control of the screens others are viewing your work on). If it's printing that concerns you, send of some photos to be printed and adjust your monitor based on those results. If you're doing the printing yourself then proper calibration is much more important.

Thanks for all the advice. Having mulled over it last night, I decided to have a tinker with the monitor settings and try to bring it a bit closer to the laptop screen. Ultimately I figured it came down to how important is it that I am sure I have true and consistent colour versus what it might cost me. And Paul made a great point in that I have no idea what monitor anyone else might use to look at my photos (and besides, I'm quietly confident that no one ever does). But when I've checked on my iPad and my work PC, my photos look to be good enough in terms of colour. It's framing, sharpness, exposure, composition etc that are my primary issues, And I figure that with non destructive editing, the importance of this is less than it is for me to simply focus on trying to improve the images I capture in the first place.

I will order a few prints though to see how thy compare just out of curiosity. Thanks again for responding as I have definitely learned a bit.

harkins wrote:Thanks for all the advice. Having mulled over it last night, I decided to have a tinker with the monitor settings and try to bring it a bit closer to the laptop screen. Ultimately I figured it came down to how important is it that I am sure I have true and consistent colour versus what it might cost me. And Paul made a great point in that I have no idea what monitor anyone else might use to look at my photos (and besides, I'm quietly confident that no one ever does). But when I've checked on my iPad and my work PC, my photos look to be good enough in terms of colour. It's framing, sharpness, exposure, composition etc that are my primary issues, And I figure that with non destructive editing, the importance of this is less than it is for me to simply focus on trying to improve the images I capture in the first place.

I will order a few prints though to see how thy compare just out of curiosity. Thanks again for responding as I have definitely learned a bit.

If you get into printing then monitor calibration is a must as you are trying to get the print to match the screen - otherwise you can end up chasing your tail or making lots and lots and lots...... of sample prints